Ancillary point from Grayling:

We can understand the meaning of a word, say the German word for "village" and have not the first clue how to use it in a sentence.

Yet we can also know how to use words without knowing what they mean. For example, plenty of people use "e.g." "QED," "i.e.," or "amen," correctly without knowing what they mean.

This to me suggests a meta knowledge of rules and language which must sit outside individual language games. Or, more reasonably, that meaning is related to use but that the two are in no way identical.

to posit nested sets — Count Timothy von Icarus

Wouldn't that suggest they are crisp, and a hierarchical tree by set inclusion? But you mean fuzzy and laterally overlapping?

"Clouds" more appropriate?

That's a tough call. The form of life "human" seems like it should wrap around the others, but there does seem to be some potential for fuzziness. French(Punk Rock) seems like it should be different from Japanese(Punk Rock), but the inner form shares a commonality across the categories of the outer term.

Ancillary point from Grayling:

We can understand the meaning of a word, say the German word for "village" and have not the first clue how to use it in a sentence.

Yet we can also know how to use words without knowing what they mean. For example, plenty of people use "e.g." "QED," "i.e.," or "amen," correctly without knowing what they mean. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think this is a good point about either semantics or pragmatics.

It seems relevant to the claim that meaning is use, which is of course different from the claim that use helps to fix our determine meaning.

And this relates to the idea that all manner of philosophical problems might be dissolved if one pays close attention to how words are used.

I think it falls short by missing grammatical facts, such as that not all words are the same. 'Village' cannot be compared to 'eg', 'ie', 'QED', 'amen', because 'village' is a content word; 'eg' and 'ie' are abbreviations that in English today have become (function) words on their own. Function words have no meaning in themselves but instead introduce a relationship between other (two) words, such is the case of basically all prepositions, and now of 'eg' — the meaning proper is therefore more abstract than of content words. But, even for function words, meaning is not use — I can't use the word 'to' properly if I don't know it brings about a directional relationship between two objects. I think what is said about the meaning of 'eg' and 'ie' here is instead its etymology. The meaning of the English word 'eg' now is 'for example', one doesn't need to know the etymology exempli gratia. Amen itself works as an interjection; you say "amen" when you end a prayer like you say "Yay" when something good happens (or when you agree with something, but it is a figurate meaning of amen).

However, I can think of better examples for "we can also know how to use words without knowing what they mean". Those would be 'duly noted', 'force to be reckoned with', 'lead astray'. Most people don't know what 'duly' means, yet they use it all the time, especially within the phrase 'duly noted'.

The problem is, as they don't know what the word actually means, and only learn how to use it from examples/contexts, instead of a word that brings about a mental image (an idea explored in the Tractatus), they eventually end up using it quite wrongly — such is the case of 'literally'. And then, if the word is no longer used by people who know its meaning but only by people who know its contexts, the word now has no semantic field but instead a context field — where meaning is use —, or in the worst scenario the word loses all meaning altogether — such is the case of 'literally'. From a context field, a new semantic field may arise — I could think of some examples, but I am in a hurry, and perhaps that is how 'naughty' came to mean 'mischievous'. So, in the case where a word has no more semantics but only context, meaning is indeed use, but that is not a good thing.

In fact I completely disagree with the point on 'village'. As soon as we know the German word is a "perfect" translation of the English word, we are able to use productively. When language learning, the only times I ever asked "How would you use it in a phrase?" was either when we were dealing with a particle (function word), which for German would be 'davon' or 'ab', or with a word with no good translation to my language.

This is not a disagreement per se of the analysis presented, I just think it is awfully simplistic and that some philosophers wrestle with language before knowing grammar.

And this relates to the idea that all manner of philosophical problems might be dissolved if one pays close attention to how words are used. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am confident that you yourself disagree with that idea to some extent.

:up:

I agree with all of that and I think it's a problem for Wittgenstein's philosophy, at least in how it is often interpreted. I do wonder how he would respond to modern AI or the Chinese Room thought experiment.

Robert Sokolowski's concept of vagueness, grounded in phenomenology and Aristotle, seems applicable to the case where words are used correctly without users understanding their meaning. It often seems possible for people to learn how to comment on complex scientific or philosophical theories, e.g. quantum mechanics, while seemingly following all the rules of those discipline's discourse, yet not really understanding what they mean. It seems very possible to me to be able to "speak of something correctly," and not to really understand it. Dogmatic theology is another excellent example here.

I am confident that you yourself disagree with that idea to some extent.

Of course; it seems demonstrably false. Half a century + on, neither ordinary language philosophy nor Wittgensteinianism have convinced many people that these issues are dissolved. Even most practitioners in these camps don't tend to assert that.

We could debate whether Wittgenstein really was such a relativist. What I wanted to point out though is that, if he does embrace the more relativistic reading, he essentially undermines his entire later philosophy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

On my reading, what Grayling is doing is creating problems that do not exist in Wittgenstein's work. He is, of course, not alone in the enterprise of creating such problems for how Wittgenstein is read and subsequently discussed and written about. If Grayling is wrong, and I think he is, then the only thing that is undermined is what follows from this false picture.

What is the point? If we are to exclude the question of whether Grayling misrepresents Wittgenstein then are we to take seriously other misrepresentations however misguided they may be? Wittgenstein drops out of the picture.

Is this intended to be more of a textual analysis thread or a give your own perspective thread @Count Timothy von Icarus?

I would say that at the level of the signifier there is an inability of use to master language and signification. For example, supposing that two cultures meet, the first thing we have in mind are the signifiers they utter. But how do we know that there is something beyond the sounds that another person utters? The use would not be given at once at the moment of uttering sounds. That is why a person can intuit that the other person speaks a language, because the signifier, the sign, in a certain sense, has been decontextualized, it appears decontextualized. The sign functions qua sign (signaling a meaning or a use) even when the context and use is not given or immediately present to an interlocutor.

And isn't this the possibility of communication, intercultural for example? If a person says "hola" to an English speaker, "hola" appears as just a signifier to the English speaker but devoid of its meaning and use. But it is precisely to the extent that "hola" has become unrooted from its context that it is possible for its context to be learned: the English speaker learns the use and meaning of "hola" from its own context. Only then is communication possible: To the extent that the sign refers beyond the given context and usage. Significance, the most proper of language, exceeds use but does not exclude it. It must be said that language has stopping points where signification slows down and that is what we call use and meaning. But signification always extends beyond these stopping points.

According to the above, meaning survives, for example interculturally, to the extent that one's own usage can be learned by a foreign culture. Because signification exceeds contexts. One cannot be a cultural relativist if meaning (even if understood as usage) transcends culture. Wittgenstein would not have taken into account the fact of the signifier that exceeds use and makes communication possible. In this sense two persons or two different animals (as in the cases of captive chimpanzees and humans) can understand each other insofar as there is signification. Did Wittgenstein have a theory of the sign?

Moreover, all of Wittgenstein's complaints about "philosophers using language wrong," can be waved away by simply claiming that Wittgenstein is not privy to the language game used by these philosophers. Perhaps being a metaphysician, a Thomist, etc. are all discrete "forms of life?" I — Count Timothy von Icarus

Broad agreement. Wittgenstein, much like Heidegger, ends up not being particularly radical or different from commonplace positions when you force yourself not to think using their specialised terms as a privileged vantage point upon philosophy, language and the world.

If you think Wittgenstein has "dissolved" a philosophical problem, there will be some premise that links what Wittgenstein (or their interlocutor) has said and what another philosopher has said. Sharing such a premise means that what Big W or their interlocutor is doing is much the same as what they're trying to avoid. And worse than that, the dissolution attempt will always already be part of the same game as the target problem's enabling conditions.

His arguments are sufficiently enigmatic that none of them are logically valid as stated, they rely on unarticulated but perpetually unfolding and changing concepts. Honestly he's just like Heidegger.

More "give your own opinion," because discussions about "what Wittgenstein really meant," are interminable.



If it's a misrepresentation it's not Grayling's, since he is commenting on efforts by some "Wittgensteinians," to clarify what Wittgenstein's philosophy entails. It seems to me that the relativist camp tends to draw from On Certainty more than PI. At any rate, they have their own extensive sets of "scriptures," to justify their position.

My personal opinion is that Wittgenstein's work is too vague to decide this issue. The tendency to give give aphorisms and metaphors instead of arguments, and the tendency to assert rather than try to demonstrate (which applies to TLP too) makes the work a sort of rorschach test, and more so than works of most philosophers (the vast diversity of Hegel interpretations would be a kindred example).



I agree that there must be some commonality that allows us to move between games. Obviously people can become fluent in new languages and cultures.

This is why I considered the idea of overlapping, and perhaps somewhat hierarchical "forms of life." Pace Wittgenstein, I think we can often understand Chinese gestures quite well. Hell, we can understand when a dog, lion, or badger is upset because mammals signal aggression in similar ways. The reason "reptilian" and "insect-like," have the negative connotations they do is because these animals don't signal their "emotions" to us in the same way, leading to them seeming unpredictable and alien.

I imagine coming to understand extraterrestrial or synthetic lifeforms capable of language would end up being a good deal more difficult than learning a new human language, although perhaps not impossible.

His arguments are sufficiently enigmatic that none of them are logically valid as stated, they rely on unarticulated but perpetually unfolding and changing concepts. Honestly he's just like Heidegger. — fdrake

:D

Yeah.

My take on Wittgenstein and his "forms of life" is that absolutely everything bottoms out in behavior. Any interpretation of behavior is inherently indeterminate and interpretations we give rely on arbitrary, inscrutable foundations characterized by circular regresses in definition and ostensive pointing. From my view the point is that this indeterminacy and underdetermination has no consequence for people's behavior which can still seem totally coherent. It comes from latent, hidden kinds of blind processes; i.e. in the modern perspective, from the physical dynamics of neuronal behavior. Knowing some kind of determinate rules and forms of life people use is beside the point because people don't need that to interact. People interact successfully despite inherent underdetermination and indeterminacy.

I don't believe that saying "meaning is use" is intended to determine what meaning is. But in lieu of determinate objective meaning structure, all there is to what we call "meaning" is use. And obviously not all meaning is use since something like "History is spelled H-I-S-T-O-R-Y" is a use of "History" that isn't necessarily related to its meaning. Obviously our use of "meaning" and similar synonyms as well as our own reflections on it don't have more to them than behavior that bottom out in neural processes. But the trying to characterize that behavior just brings us back to the issues of indeterminacy. I don't believe "meaning as use" or "forms of life" are meant to be rigorous, comprehensive theories of meaning. They just point to the fact that seemingly coherent behavior co-exists with inherent indeterminacy. The idea of nested forms of life I think is quite appropriate in the sense that behavior has regularities on various different scales, and this is a general feature of complex systems in biology and physics.

I can't use the word 'to' properly if I don't know it brings about a directional relationship between two objects. — Lionino

The problem is, as they don't know what the word actually means, and only learn how to use it from examples/contexts — Lionino

As soon as we know the German word is a "perfect" translation of the English word, we are able to use productively. — Lionino

I think the answer to these issues is that there is nothing more to knowledge than use either. It is driven by underlying neural processes we are not privy to and cannot be interpeted semantically but physically.

I like this quote from developmental paychologists Esther Thelen and Linda Smith:

"We believe this answer is wrong. Knowing is the process of dynamic assembly across multileveled systems in the service of a task. We do not need to invoke represented constructs such as “object” or “extended in space and time” outside the moment of knowing. Knowing, just like action, is the momentary product of a dynamic system, not a dissociable cause of action."

"We think to act. Thus, knowing may begin as and always be an inherently sensorimotor act."

(Paper: Dynamic Systems Theories; direct pdf download when clicking link https://cogdev.sitehost.iu.edu/labwork/handbook.pdf )

We then have dynamic neural systems that can observe their environment, causing complex physical interactions in the system which we think of as learning and encompass all our complicated intellectual abilities. But we cannot cash out this stuff as "knowledge" until we see it's behavior in real time which even then is indeterminate in interpretatio . This is how we would think of "meaning as use" too so "knowledge as use" is basically a generalization.

We then have to account for the fact that we can make an observation and somehow miraculously aquire the ability to coherently use a word in a certain way that we could not before (e.g. learning what the german word for village means and miraculously being able to use it) because we have a complicated internal neural system. But that doesn't contradict the idea that there can be nothing more to what that word means than how we use it. Sure you could point to the internal neural system but we cannot interpret that semantically and we can only cash that out once we observe the behavior even if that behavior is kind of meta- such as when you just define a word... metacognitively stating the definition of a word is behavior, or saying that you could state the definition if you wanted to (without actually stating it) is also behavior, generated by internal neural processes which are capably of generating all of our behaviors. At the same time being able to use a word does not always mean we are using it in a way which seems coherent with the consensus use or that we won't "get it wrong" simply because our understanding isn't deep enough. Nonetheless when we do get it "right", there is nothing more to it than use, generated by the underlying neural systems (at the same time there is no fixed, rigid criterion of "getting it right". Again, all behavior or "use" has indeterminate interpretation; nonetheless our behavior can be coherent.

signifier to the English speaker but devoid of its meaning and use. But it is precisely to the extent that "hola" has become unrooted from its context that it is possible for its context to be learned: the English speaker learns the use and meaning of "hola" from its own context. Only then is communication possible: To the extent that the sign refers beyond the given context and usage. Significance, the most proper of language, exceeds use but does not exclude it. — JuanZu

Signifiers and significance is also nothing more than use as knowledge is - we observe symbols and physical interactions from the outside world causally affect our internal neural systems. They then can spit out future behaviour that reflects the causal interaction with the symbol in the context of the outside world... a symbol is nothing more than the associations we observe it connected to. And out understanding of the symbol is nothing more than the behaviors our internal neural systems spit out, effectively the use of the symbol, the predictions or anticipations and reactions of symbol associations which itself is cashed out in behavior, whether verbal, attentional or otherwise. Those abilities may rely on how our internal neural systems are parameterized but you cannot interpret that semantically. You can only interpret mechanistically. One physical event causes another and then another which results in eventual states and outcomes. You can also formulate this kind of thing in terms of experiences too imo... what we know, how we think is nothing more than sequences of experiences. And I think that is actually a central part of the sections in Wittgenstein's PI when he is talking about mental acts like reading, the point being that just as with language, all our capabilities are characterized by indeterminacy and that ultimately none of these things are more than the sequences of experiences when we perform mental acts like reading... analogous to meaning as use... language is nothing more than the placement of words in the context of other words and other events in our experiences and out in the world. Characterizing that is inherently indeterminate, yet the behavior occurs seemingly coherently anyway.

So on the contrary, I think nothing we do exceeds use. My interpretation is Wittgenstein I don't thing was creating a theory of meaning. But saying that what we think of as meaning is nothing above use and behavior.

Interpreted in modern terms, I believe Wittgenstein is just perhaps an early pioneer of enactive cognition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enactivism

And so meaning, knowledge, language is enactivism. Most acutely perhaps, situated cognition as alluded in the Thelen quote earlier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_cognition

Wittgenstein's concept of "forms of life" in his later philosophy is infamously vague, despite doing a lot of heavy lifting.

On some views, the relevant "form of life," is something common to all humanity. It is something like "what we all share by virtue of being human and of living in the same world." Advocates of this perspective often pay a lot of attention to Wittgenstein's comments on pain. When it comes to pain, it seems to be our natural expressiveness, something we share with other mammals, that is the scaffolding on which language about pain is built.

However, there is an equally popular view where the "form of life" one belongs to varies by culture. The more "extreme" forms of this view also tend to posit that we cannot "translate between" forms of life. So, when Wittgenstein says "if a lion could talk, we could not understand him," or "we don't understand Chinese gestures any more than Chinese sentences," this is sometimes taken to mean that we cannot simply discover the differences between different forms of life and convert between them. Sometimes this comes out in almost essentialist terms, where a person from another culture is precluded from ever understanding another culture in its own terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The way I think of "form of life" is biological -- which includes the social.

So if a lion could talk then we'd understand the lion because they've decided to pick up the language game: it'd be strange but here they are talking to us. How could I deny the lion if they're saying something I understand?

So biologically we'll be inclined to speak in this or that way, but if another species somehow learns how to talk then I think we'd convert between them, but also we can't specify how "ahead of time" -- it would not be a priori.

Signifiers and significance is also nothing more than use as knowledge is - we observe symbols and physical interactions from the outside world causally affect our internal neural systems. They then can spit out future behaviour that reflects the causal interaction with the symbol in the context of the outside world... a symbol is nothing more than the associations we observe it connected to. — Apustimelogist

In the spirit of Wittgenstein, we should keep in mind that we are not talking about an ‘internal’ cognitive system receiving inputs from, computationally representing and spitting out outputs to an ‘external’ world. The system includes brain, body and the intersubjective, linguistic environment in an inseparable reciprocal interaction. As Merleau-Ponty wrote:

“[t]he world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects”

Forms of life are the intersubjective practices that we enact in actual contexts of social relation . The use of words are our doings , normatively constrained by the possibilities and limits of intelligibility produced by the enacting of particular language games. Regardless of whatever rules and criteria of meaning have previously been laid down, these are open to contestation in each actual
use of words, as each party to communication re-assesses what is at stake and at issue in the interchange.

Wittgenstein, much like Heidegger, ends up not being particularly radical or different from commonplace positions when you force yourself not to think using their specialised terms as a privileged vantage point upon philosophy, language and the world… His arguments are sufficiently enigmatic that none of them are logically valid as stated, they rely on unarticulated but perpetually unfolding and changing concepts. Honestly he's just like Heidegger. — fdrake

I’d love to hear what ‘commonplace positions’ you think these writers are regurgitating. What do you suppose their commonplace critiques of the ‘logical validity’ you obviously prize might look like? Do you think Ratcliffe would agree with you that they are not offering anything significantly new, given that his ideas are strongly indebted to both of them?

I don't think either H or W are regurgitating, but that they've had an influence upon philosophical thinking to a point that anyone whose read philosophy knows these points, even if they are hard to articulate -- especially because they're enigmatic, rather than logically valid.

Not a bad thing, at all. I think the Witti Heidegger comparison holds pretty well, tho I prefer to say Derrida-Wittgenstein is the true duck-rabbit of western-philosophy :D

↪Joshs I don't think either H or W are regurgitating, but that they've had an influence upon philosophical thinking to a point that anyone whose read philosophy knows these points, even if they are hard to articulate -- especially because they're enigmatic, rather than logically valid.

Not a bad thing, at all. I think the Witti Heidegger comparison holds pretty well, tho I prefer to say Derrida-Wittgenstein is the true duck-rabbit of western-philosophy — Moliere

The way I see the heritage , Heidegger comes after Witt, and Derrida after Heidegger. That is, Witt is the least radical of the three. I wish you were right about their ideas having by now been thorough assimilated within philosophy. If that were true it would make my work a lot easier. My experience has been that there is a small community of thinkers who grasp the most radical implications of Heidegger and Derrida, and a much larger group that misreads them as similar to writers like Kierkegaard, Sartre and Levinas.

My experience has been that there is a small community of thinkers who grasp the most radical implications of Heidegger and Derrida, and a much larger group that misreads them as similar to writers like Kierkegaard, Sartre and Levinas. — Joshs

If ever you feel the inclination, I'd like to participate in a thread on these distinctions. I cannot claim that the ideas have been assimilated, and -- as a pluralist, always -- I think they ought to be.

I fear being part of:

a much larger group that misreads them as similar to writers like Kierkegaard, Sartre and Levinas. — Joshs

Because these are my guys :D -- tho it may be better for another thread?

Language and mathematics are social practices.

Language and mathematics are things we learn how to do through social interactions. Children raised in isolation will learn neither and children learn the language they grow up with.

Language and mathematics are rule governed. Games are also rule governed.

These rules are developed socially and change over time.

Language and mathematics are abilities we develop.

Language and mathematics are activities. They are behaviors we engage in.

People are able to understand each other because they share things in common.

If people are following a rule incorrectly, but they think they are following it correctly, they will not know they are following the rules incorrectly (this one is a tautology).

Use determines what a word means over time. If all people started using "cat" to refer to "dogs" and "dog" to refer to "cats" the words would swap meanings.

---

I can see how these can all seem pretty common sense, and I can't think of anyone who ever denied them. The philosophy of language of Wittgenstein's era wasn't challenging these assumptions. However, it was sometimes getting so far into theory that it seemed to forget them at times.

There are, of course, deeper things to draw on in Wittgenstein, but sometimes these get served up as if they are full explanations. E.g.:

"What is logic?"
"It's something humans engage in, an activity."

Well, respiration is also an activity, but we can probably go a bit further than that.

If it's a misrepresentation it's not Grayling's, since he is commenting on efforts by some "Wittgensteinians, to clarify what Wittgenstein's philosophy entails." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps, but as I said it is a matter of:

... the enterprise of creating such problems for how Wittgenstein is read — Fooloso4

The problem remains and he is a part of it. We cannot exclude what Wittgenstein said from the problems other manufacture from what he said.

My personal opinion is that Wittgenstein's work is too vague to decide this issue. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would include Plato and Aristotle, as evidenced by the continued and varied amount of work on them.

As he says in the preface to PI:

I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.

It could, of course, be argued that this is what those who generate these problems are doing. There is, however, a difference between creating pseudo-problems and the problems of thinking that Wittgenstein is addressing. Although he has his doubts as to what he will accomplish

in the darkness of this time

he holds to the hope that his work might:

bring light into one brain or another

To this end, much of what he does is to clear away what occludes our ability to see.

Wittgenstein's concept of "forms of life" in his later philosophy is infamously vague, despite doing a lot of heavy lifting. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Despite the theories about forms of life, I do not think it is vague unless one treats it as a theory. He has no theory about forms of life, he is simply pointing beyond language as something existing in and of itself to our being in the world and all that entails conceptually and practically. The boundaries between one way of life and another or one practice and another are not fixed and immutable.

With regard to "cognitive relativism", Grayling says:

In effect this means that the concepts in question are not concepts of truth and the rest, as we usually wish to understand them, but concepts of opinion and belief.

Unless some "tribe" (a favorite thought example of Wittgenstein) is in possession of the truth itself and the rest itself, we are dealing with opinions and beliefs held at that time and place to be true. The truth is, we are not in possession of the whole of the immutable truth. Throughout history human beings have held things to be true that turn out not to be. This is not something to be solves by attacks on the truth of relativism so understood.

Language and mathematics are rule governed. Games are also rule governed.

These rules are developed socially and change over time — Count Timothy von Icarus

As to this the following:

We cannot appeal to social regularities or collectively presupposed norms within a practice: there are no such things, I have argued, but more important, if there were they would not thereby legitimately bind us. Any regularities in what practitioners have previously done does not thereby have any authority to bind subsequent performances to the same regularities. The familiar Wittgensteinian paradoxes about rule following similarly block any institution of norms merely by invocation of a rule, since no rule can specify its correct application to future instances (Wittgenstein 1953). Practices should instead be understood as comprising performances that are mutually interactive in partially shared circumstances. (Joseph Rouse)

Do you think this idea is commonsensical?

That isn't Wittgenstein though. Wittgensteinians often make claims that are the opposite of "common sense." For example, the claim that a man who washes ashore on desert Island loses his ability to make and follow rules, but then regains this capacity when a second person washes ashore later. Obviously, a great many Wittgensteinians (as well as people generally) find this to be somewhat absurd.


The common sense points I could think of were just the ones I pointed to. The ancients were well aware that language shifts over time. For example, parts of the Tanakh are written in extremely archaic Hebrew (and exist in a sort of proto-Hebraic in their earliest known forms), and this comes up in interpretation.

I’d love to hear what ‘commonplace positions’ you think these writers are regurgitating. — Joshs

It's mostly "what a word means depends upon the context" innit. Language game, form of life, background, communities of language use... All contexts.

What do you suppose their commonplace critiques of the ‘logical validity’ you obviously prize might look like? — Joshs

By that I meant that you can't put either of their arguments into syllogisms (premise/inference) form without massive exegetical issues. They just don't write or think like that.

Nevertheless when people use Wittgenstein's ideas, they have to interface with other arguments. Perhaps you can do that solely in his terms, but honestly trying to do it equitably makes it very difficult for Wittgenstein. Which is a weakness of his, rather than of philosophy.

Super good philosophical literature at any rate. Very evocative. I've spent altogether too long studying Wittgenstein and Heidegger, I appreciate both, just not in the manner of being a member of their mystery cults.

There are, of course, deeper things to draw on in Wittgenstein, but sometimes these get served up as if they are full explanations. E.g.:

"What is logic?"
"It's something humans engage in, an activity." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Despite the theories about forms of life, I do not think it is vague unless one treats it as a theory. He has no theory about forms of life, he is simply pointing beyond language as something existing in and of itself to our being in the world and all that entails conceptually and practically. The boundaries between one way of life and another or one practice and another are not fixed and immutable. — Fooloso4

I think that's part of the problem our dear Count is highlighting though. You can use Wittgenstein's ideas as a line in the sand between philosophical and non-philosophical use of thought - what counts as bewitched and right thinking. Which is quite frustrating, as his distinction between philosophical and non-philosophical forms of thought (life/language...) is also one of his positions.

There's a prosaic, wistful, unreflective and somewhat romantic construal of the everyday. Which is removed from the interminable and alienating abstraction of analysing concepts. Despite life being saturated with interminable and alienating abstractions.

In his own metaphorical terms, I think when Wittgenstein says that his spade is turned when he hits the bedrock of "forms of life," many would simply suggest that he buy himself a shovel or a pick axe.

As to logical form, one glaring example is that TLP has no example of actually mapping the logic of a proposition to the world. The claim about the relationship is never demonstrated, and it turns out to be impossible to demonstrate, even for simple statements.

I still think that TLP might end up being more valuable than PI. It has a number of very good insights that I think relate very well to the paradigm shift across the sciences brought on by information theory and complexity studies. It's too bad Wittgenstein didn't live to see the rise of these techniques and how they can unify the sciences, because I think he would have had very interesting ideas about it all.

I have not read primary Wittgenstein, so I am far from being able to lean towards either interpretation, but intrepretation aside, and taking the ideas as they are, I think that:

Sometimes this comes out in almost essentialist terms, where a person from another culture is precluded from ever understanding another culture in its own terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are elements to this that are undoutably true. You may move to China, learn the culture, eat and cook Chinese food, learn to speak Chinese better than most natives with no accent, learn Chinese history and geography, have many Chinese friends who adore you, marry a Chinese girl, raise your kids in China, be a Chinese nationalist, and yet, you will never know how it is to be Chinese, because you were not raised in China, it wasn't the culture within which you learned about the world, you didn't attend Chinese middle school and your first friends weren't Chinese. This distinction is not just important but fundamental. If our culture and language impact brain development in early childhood, there is not just an abstract difference between individuals of different cultures, but a physical one.

This presumably applies to expressions like true and real themselves and indeed, it is precisely Wittgenstein's point that such expressions cease to be philosophically significant once we remind ourselves of their ordinary employments.

Even within that view, one doesn't need to go the absolutist route. One may say that, even though most lexical items are relative, there are some items ('real' and 'true') whose concepts are psychological necessities stemming from our neurological configuration and thus evolutionary history — ¿does a shark have a concept of true if it can't imagine things as otherwise?, as this short movie I really like explains, we know that mental simulation is mostly a feature of mammals and avians, not of fish and reptiles.
The quote pretty much makes the same point later:

first, we have to share with the aliens some natural capacities and responses of a perceptual and cognitive type, giving rise to at least some similar beliefs about the world; and secondly we have to be able to share with them certain principles governing those beliefs; for one important example, that what is believed and therefore acted upon is held to be true

How then do we recognize another form of life as another form of life? The ability to detect that something is a form of life and that it differs from our own surely demands that there be a means for us to identify its presence and to specify what distinguishes it from ours.

Not sure if that is a great rebuttal. I could parody it with "How do we process the colour black as information if black is exactly the absence of information/light?". Well, absence of information is information, and absence of information about a form of life is information, all the while keeping that form of life unpenetrable to us.

But this recreates the same Cartesian isolation Wittgenstein wanted to avoid. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah.

all of Wittgenstein's complaints about "philosophers using language wrong," can be waved away by simply claiming that Wittgenstein is not privy to the language game used by these philosophers. Perhaps being a metaphysician, a Thomist, etc. are all discrete "forms of life?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Nice :lol: I will use that switcheroo in the future.

It seems very possible to me to be able to "speak of something correctly," and not to really understand it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Basically so. Saying something as learned from context allows you to say something correct, but it is not the same as understanding. When learning math, you need to understand things, you can't just memorise every equation, the infinity^infinity of them.

." For example, the claim that a man who washes ashore on desert Island loses his ability to make and follow rules, but then regains this capacity when a second person washes ashore later. Obviously, a great many Wittgensteinians (as well as people generally) find this to be somewhat absurd. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why would the man who washes ashore lose his ability to make and follow rules? He would bring with him from
whatever culture he was raised in a background intelligibility of linguistic practices. When he is alone , thinking to himself, he would draw from that background. He would bring those practices to bear on his engagements with a second person on the island. Rouse’s point isn’t that we dont draw from that background, it is that the rules it brings it with don’t bind us in the new situation.

Exactly lol.

That's one way of framing it in the "Tarzan Versus Crusoe," discussion at least, but there is also the idea that Crusoe cannot make new rules so long as he is alone, and any continued rule following can only be judged by an absent community.

But one might consider that, if we are incapable of judging our own rule following, what qualifies us to judge others?

So on the contrary, I think nothing we do exceeds use. My interpretation is Wittgenstein I don't thing was creating a theory of meaning. But saying that what we think of as meaning is nothing above use and behavior. — Apustimelogist

What I say about use I can say a fortiori about the organic ends of the organism. At this point the power of language extends beyond the organism and is able to situate itself in the non-organic. This is the case, for example, with computation. But computation is a possibility of the signifier to function beyond organic context to the point of becoming autonomous in its production of signification (artificial intelligence). All this is something natural to the signifier since signification comes to analogize itself to the most mechanical reality in the sense of being composed of different systems of signs of different hierarchy and their relations. It comes to me the notion of "transcription" which expresses how different sign systems interact with each other extending signification beyond the human environment. A first system of signs affects a second system of signs, configures it, and unleashes different relations and movements in that second system. All this takes place to the extent that the signifier becomes unrooted from its current context and functioning (use) and opens itself to reinterpretation (even in interpretation in its most mechanical sense). "Things make signs of other things" is perhaps why language allows us to relate to the world; there is something in language that simply does not belong to us and maintains continuity with the world. Isn't this what the ancients called "Logos"?